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Understanding the North/South divide

Hello all.
I'm posting this in it's own thread because I don't think anyone is reading it because I originally put it in that fuckthesouth.com thread.
Anyways I think this is a very interesting description of the cultural differences of north/south red/blue etc and how these differences came to be.

First of all, to quote Steven Pinker (who is himself referencing anthropologists) from his book The Blank Slate:

Quote:
In Culture of Honor the social psychologist Richard Nisbett, and Dov Cohen show that violent cultures arise in socoeties that are beyond the reach of the law and in which precious assets are easily stolen. ( 81) Societies that herd animals meet both conditions. Herders tend to live in territories that are unsuitable for growing crops and thus far from the centers of government. And their major asset, livestock, is easier to steal then the major assets of farmers; land. In hearding societies a man can be stripped of his wealth (and his ability to acquire wealth) in an eyeblink. Men in that mileu cultivate a hair-trigger for violent retaliation, not just against rustlers, but against anyone who would test their resolve by signs of disrespect that could reveal them to be easy pickings for rustlers. Scottish highlanders, Appalachian mountain men, Western cowboys, Masai warriors, Sioux Indians, Druze, and Bedouin tribesmen, Balkan clansmen, and Indochinese Montagards are familiar examples.

A man's honor is a kind of "social reality" in John Searle's sense: it exists because everyone agrees it exists, but it is no less real for that, since it resides in a shared granting of power. When the lifestyle of a people changes, their culture of honor can stay with them for a long time, because it is difficult for anyone to be the first to renounce the culture. The very act of renouncing it can be a concession of weakness and low status even when the sheep and mountains are a distant memory.

The American South has long had higher rates of violence than the North, including a tradition of dueling among, "men of honor" such as Andrew Jackson. Nisbett and Cohen note that much of the south was settled by Scotish and Irish herdsman, whereas the North was settled by English farmers. Also, for much of history the mountanous frontier of the South was beyond the reach of law. The resulting Southern culture of honor is, remarkably, alive at the turn of the twenty-first century in laws and social attitudes. Southern states place fewer restrictions on gun onwership, allow people to shoot an assailant or burglar without having to retreat first, are tolerant of spanking parents and corporal punishment by schools, are more hawkish on issues of national defense, and execute more of their criminals. ( 82)

81- Nisbett and Cohen 1996

82- Ibid.

This is corroborated by multiple lines of evidence, one being that Southerners have on average been proven physically more agressive, or prone to counter-agression by neurological studies, to again quote Pinker:

Quote:
These attitudes do not float in a cloud called "culture" but are visible in the psychology of individual Southerners. Nisbett and Cohen advertised a fake psychology experiment at the liberal University of Michigan. To get to the lab, respondents had to squeeze by a stooge who was filing papers in a hallway. As a respondent brushed past him, the stooge slammed the door shut and muttered, "Asshole." Students from Northern states laughed him off, but students from Southern states were visibly upset. The Southerners had elevated levels of testosterone and cortisol (a stress hormone) and reported lower of self-esteem. They compensated by giving a firmer handshake and acting more dominate towards an experimenter, and on the way out of the lab they refused to back down when another stooge approached in a narrow hallway and one of the two had to step aside. It's not that Southerners walk around chronically fuming: a control group that had been inserted were as cool and collected as the Northerners. And Southerners do not approve of violence in the abstract, only of violence provoked by insult or trespass

Here I should note that the South is almost universally composed of Red States.

Geographic location according to the above data, is a better indicator of political loyalties then economic class.

The Honor Culture hypothesis is further corroborated by the increased levels of violence shown among African-American (Again from Steven Pinker):

Quote:

African American inner-city neighborhoods are among the more conspicuous violent environments in Western democracies, and they too have an entrenched culture of honor. In his insightful essay "The Code of the Streets," the sociologist Elijah Anderson describes the young men's obsession with respect, their cultivation of a reputation for toughness, their willingness to engage in violent retaliation for any slight, and their universal acknolwedgement of the rules of this code. (83) Were it not for giveaways in their dialect, such as "If someone disses you, you got to straighten them out," Anderson's code would be indestinguishable from accounts of of the culture of honor among white Southerners.

Inner-city African Americans were never goatherds, so why did they develope a culture of honor? One possibility is that they brought it with them from the South where they migrated to large cities after the two world wars--- a nice irony for Southern racists who would blame inner-city violence on something distinctively African American. Another factor is that young-men's wealth is easily stealable, since it is often in the form of cash or drugs. A third is that ghettos are a kind of frontier in which police protection is unreliable- the gangsta group Public Enemy has a song called "911 is a Joke". A fourth is that poor people, especially young men, cannot take pride in a prestigious job, a nice house, or professional accomplishments and this may be doubly true for African Americans after centuries of slavery and discrimination. Their reputation on the streets is their only claim to status. Finally Anderson points out the code of the streets is self-perpetuating. A majority of African-American families in the inner city subscribe to peaceable middle-class values they refer to as "decent". (84). But that is not enough to end the culture of honor:

Everybody knows that if the rules are violated, there are penalties. Knowledge of the code is thus largely defensive; it is literally necessary for operating in public. Therefore, even though families with a decency orientation are usually opposed to values of the code, they often reluctantly encourage their children's familiarity with it to enable them to negotiate the inner-city environment. (85)

Studies of the dynamics of ghetto violence are consistent with Anderson's analysis. The jump in American urban crime rates between 1985 and 1993 can be tied in part to the appearance of crack cocain and the underground economy it spawned. As economist Jeff Grogger points out, "Violence is a way to enforce property rights in the absence of legal recourse." ( 86) The emergence of violence within the new drug economy set off the expected Hobbesian trap. As the crimonologist Jeffrey Fagan noted, gun use spread contagiously as "young people who otherwise wouldn't carry guns felt that they had to in order to avoid being victimized by their armed peers."(87) And as we saw in the chapter on politics, conspicuous economic inequality is a good predictor of violence (better then poverty itself), presumably because men deprived of legitimate means of acquiring status compete for status on the streets instead.(8icon_cool.gif It is not surprising, then, that when African American teenagers are taken out of underclass neighborhoods they are no more violent or delinquet than white teenagers. (89)

The last part I put in bold just in case some bigot wanted to try to promote some sort of genetic cause as the reason for increased violence among African Americans (I know for example there is an actual "Nazi Guild" on thos forum- how it is even allowed is beyond me.)

And the fact is the Honor Culture hypothesis is further corroborated by breakdowns of studying rural vs. urban areas. To quote the Economist article I brought up:

Quote:
America, it is said, can live together because Americans live apart. The two cultures occupy different worlds. Traditionalists are concentrated in a great L-shape on the map, the spine of the Rockies forming its vertical arm, its horizontal one cutting a swathe through the South. With a couple of exceptions, all these “red states” voted for Mr Bush in 2000.

The rest of the country is more secular. This includes the Pacific coast and the square outlined by the big L, consisting of the north-eastern and upper mid-western states. With a few exceptions, these “blue states” voted for Mr Gore in 2000.

Their differences are deeply entrenched. Traditionalists are heavily concentrated in smaller towns and rural areas. Secularists dominate big cities. Southerners tend to be a bit more religious, a bit more socially conservative and more supportive of a strong military stance than the rest of the country. Intriguingly, black southerners are more conservative than blacks elsewhere, though less conservative than their white neighbours.

This is likewise further verified by a look at red/vs. within state breakdowns, showing that urban areas tend to be blue, areas immediately surrounding urban purple, and as we get into more and more rural areas the effect is we see more and more red:

The fact is less developed nations have been found to have higher rates of violence, especially collective violence then more developed nations, see Charles Tilly's The Politics of Collective Violence. This can be seen as confirmation for the notion that lack of social institutions lead to more violent attitudes via honor culture mechanisms.

Tribal society's especially have higher rates of violence, with death from murder and warfare as high as 30%, with the lowest recorded rates of death from violence/warfare within tribal societies being 10%. This is vastly greater then the rates of death from violence in medieval society's which is around 3-5%, and it gets even lower in industrial society's (1-.5%, even counting world wars 1 and 2). (See Skeptic volume 9, "Whence the Noble Savage", by Patrick Frank).

And the fact is the US is considered more violent then other industrialized nations. This given our more colonial history would also further serve to establish the honor culture hypothesis.

Possible objections and weaknesses in the honor culture hypothesis:

1) It may well be that coming from a colonial/lawless envrionment makes one more prone to religious and militaristic tendencies, but there are no proven free market tendencies

Well one way to answer the above would be to note that political attitudes, even seemingly unrelated ones tend to come in clumps. To again quote Pinker:

Quote:
The Right-Left axis aligns an astonishing collection of beliefs that at first glance seem to have nothing in common. If you learn that someone is in favor of a strong military, for example, it is a good bet that the person is also in favor of judicial restraint rather then judicial activism. If someone believes in the importance of religion, chances are she will be tough on crime and favor lower taxes. Proponents of laissez-faire policies tend to favor patriotism and the family, and they are more likely to be old then young, pragmatic than idealistic, censorous rather then permissive, meritocratic than egalitarian, gradualist then revolutionary, and in a business rather than a university or government agency. The opposing positions cluster just as reliably: if someone is sympathetic to rehabilitating offenders, or to affirmative action, or to generous welfare programs, or to a tolerance of homosexuality, chances are that he or she will be a pacifist, an environmentalist, an activist, an egalitarian, a secularist, and a professor or student.

Hence its a fairly reasonable assumption that being more religious, or militaristic, likely makes one more prone to free market ideologies.

Likely this is not merely from pro-corporate sentiments, but arises from more pro-private property, and anti-federal government positions (notice that much of the corporatist rhetoric revolves around the issue of property, big government and taxes). However this excuse can be seen as ad hoc without further corroboration.

2) Your own polls and statistics show an anomaly in your own hypothesis. The fact is you say African-Americans are more stricken by honor culture, however they are also more likely to vote Democrat then any other group, 80% of African-Americans voted John Kerry, and 90% for Al Gore

To be honest I really have no good excuse for this anomaly. One possible reason however may be that the African-American community is more urbanized-- meaning that though they are more violent due to lawlessness, they not being rural lack certain elements of the colonial mentality embodied by the South. I believe that African-Americans in rural areas are in fact more conservative then their urban counter-parts, however I would like to do more research on this befoe saying anything definite.

To assume that America's outstanding record of violence (in comparison to other developed nations) stems from it's development as a nation strikes me as a dubious claim. I would think colonialism is a bit too outdated to root it as a source of our violent tendencies. Sure, the 'honor culture' may perpetually arise generation to generation, but it's continuation would be attributed more to the environment its in (rural or inner city), then the history of it's existence.
Yea, I know that's what he was getting at, it's just that whole 'colonial history' part just threw me off. That's like saying there are more drunks in Australia because the initial white settlers were British outlaws.
Aside from that, good stuff.

I think that the theory holds water pretty well, but I'm not at all sure that we can trace the Honor Culture back to herding goats. I think the economic element (easily portable wealth being easy to steal) is a very good bet, but the cultural "bully" aspect of the inner city probably has a lot more to do with inner-city violence than economics. Criminals have very poor boundaries. They do not recognize or respect other peoples' property rights. They feel entitled to take whatever they want, or destroy whatever they can, just because they "want to." They should not be surprised when the people that they harm wish to kill them. To avoid this unpleasant reality, all one need do is avoid bullying, robbing or harming others. Treat other people with dignity and respect, and most likely, they will treat YOU with dignity and respect.

This is an extrapolation of the "An armed society is a polite society" Southernism. True for me. Don't know about you.

Originally posted by KaBar2@Apr 7 2005, 09:57 PM but the cultural "bully" aspect of the inner city probably has a lot more to do with inner-city violence than economics. Criminals have very poor boundaries. They do not recognize or respect other peoples' property rights. They feel entitled to take whatever they want, or destroy whatever they can, just because they "want to."

[post=3909561]Quoted post[/post]​

Click to expand...

Maybe in the inner city it has more to do with not having anything, and thus a lack of values related to ownership combined with nothing to lose...

I advise anyone who wants to learn about any of this to take some college lever History clasess. The reason why we city people view the south as being "Slow, redneck, hilbilly" is because of the fact that a lot of the south is just that, and its the Norths fault. After the civil war the reconstruction fucked them up so bad that they are still struggling to this day.

I also think the portability of wealth is the strongest argument here as well.
Maybe some of you missed it but it transfers the idea to the inner city with the onset of crack cocaine.

And bob: The nation was going industrialized anyways. That's where the money was going at the time. I guess that's why rednecks in the north are metalheads and rednecks in the south listen to country. The south chose to stay agrarian and suffered financially because of it.

The "agrarian South" is only marginally true today. The South is not nearly as agrarian as the Midwest or the Northwest. The Gulf Coast, in particular (where I live--in Houston) is heavily industrialized. Houston is the second-largest chemical and petroleum manufacturing city in the U.S., and the third-largest port.

The "industrial vs. agrarian" thing was true up until around 1950. Today, there is industry of all sorts just about all through the South. There are, of course, still a few agricultural workers and people who choose to remain poor and out in the boondocks, but it's a CHOICE. They are able to remain there because of AFDC and public assistance. Nation-wide, only about 3% of the population is still involved in agriculture, and the "family farms" are fighting the corporate farms tooth and nail trying to stay in business. The rest of the rural population moved to the city thirty or forty years ago.

Reconstruction ended here in Texas in 1876. In less than a year, the Republicans and Radical Republicans were driven from office, and the Democratic Party (the ex-Confederates) swept virtually every political office in the state. It remained like that until the 1980's. The massive changes that have taken place in the South have changed culture some, but the "honor" thing is still very strong here.

Interesting, when you think about it, that the whole "respect" thing is a white Southern tradition that lives on among the primarially African-American inner-city poor, even up North.

"Having something" is a relative thing. The poorest people in the U.S. are still rich compared to the average person in the Third World.

And about "having something" being relative to an extent... I recently found out that there is a psychological term called "anhedonia" that deals with this condition. I think it's pretty prevalent in the US this condition of being desensitized to what we have and desiring more and more to stay happy.

To follow up on villian and kabar's points-
What might contribute to the prevalence of violence in impoverished areas of the States is the consumerist culture that saturates our media. living up to the ideal image of the American as the conspicuous consumer would inevitably lead to resentment in those who fail to do so, and only the most insecure types might resort to violence. There are studies that prove this- societies in other countries that might fall far below any poverty yardstick but are oblivious of being so tend to be more content then those who may be better off, but are actually aware of their financial state in relation to their countries'.

There's plus's and minus's to the north and the south. I'll tell you what though as stupid and backwards as we see the south, they are alot more free than us. Where I'm at it's a fucking police state with cops everywere looking to lockup everybody for anything. Down south you hardly ever see a cop (not that they aint shitheads when you do see them)

The "IQ and Politics" chart was quite interesting. The odd thing is that the states with the lowest IQ (according to the chart) tend to be the Southern states with the largest African-American populations. Since I definately do not believe in any race/intelligence correlation, the only thing I can think of is that the most ambitious and well-educated people from the poorest Southern states must have headed for greener pastures, and the less-ambitious and less-well-educated people must have remained in the South. All the data points to cultural bias in testing slanting the results against African-Americans. Since the African-American culture is essentially a Southern culture, regardless of where it is found (this is why Northern black folks say "y'all") I suspect that the bias might be REGIONAL and not just racial. But I have no statistics or data to back up that speculation, just a gut-level feeling.

When I was in the Marine Corps, I found that Southerners, both black and white, tended to stick together. Kind of odd, considering the supposed racial disharmony of the South. I think it had to do with a shared culture.

The south politician preaches to the poor white man,
"You've got more than the blacks.
Don't complain"
"You're better than them,You've been born with white skin"
They explain.

And the negros name,
Is used it is plain,
for the politicians gain,
as he rises to fame,
and the poor white remain,
on the caboose of the train,
but it ain't him it to blame,
he's only a pawn in the game.

The poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool,
He's taught in his school,
from the start by the rules,
that the laws are with him,
to protect his white skin,
to keep up his heat,
and never think straight,
bout the shape that he's in;
but it ain't him to blame,
he's only a pawn in the game.

From the poverty shacks,
he looks through the cracks to the tracks.
And the hoof-beats pound in his brain.
And he's taught how to walk in a pack,
shoot in the back,
with his fist in a clench,
to hang and to lynch,
to hide 'neath the hood,
to kill with no pain,
like a dog on a chain,
he ain't got no name,
but it ain't him to blame,
he's only a pawn in the game.

Race in the United States. Ever feel like a second class citizen?
Are you a hyphenated american?
African-american
Latin-american
Native-american
Asian-american

We never hear European-American. Do they consider themselves the only true americans? Something to think about I picked up from another demographer. Apparently, census data is showing LESS equality in america since 1994.